


raise your heart to the sky

by Carmarthen



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: 16th Century CE, 5 Times, Changing Tenses, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Not A Fix-It, Post-Canon, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5338190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five Advents for the woman who becomes Lady Capulet (mostly gen, with a hint of f/f).</p>
            </blockquote>





	raise your heart to the sky

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 1 of the [Shakespeare Advent Event 2015](http://promptmeshakespeare.tumblr.com/post/134022721302/shakespeare-advent-event-2015). I've been trying for ages to write about the ladies and their relationships, but kept getting stuck on inventing personal names for them that worked for me—after all, they weren't always Lady Capulet and Lady Montague. Anyway, drcalvin and plinytheyounger suggested these names, and I hope now I'll be able to start properly feeling them out (especially the cryptic Lady M.).

Diana had never cared much for Advent as a girl. She hated the trudge to church in the foggy, chill dawn hours every Sunday, the frost crunching under her pattens, only to sit on the hard benches of the church as the priest droned on about sin and judgment. It was always too cold to doze off, so she’d amused herself by eyeing Hippolita, who was a few years older and always enviably well turned-out, even at this modest, sober, dreary time of year. 

Even the plainest of her gowns was heavy silk, the sleeves and bodice and hem pinked and ruffled just so; and of course pearls were not _really_ ostentatious, even if they tipped every aiglet tying the sleeves closed and bordered bodice and cuffs. Diana herself only had a gold and silver chain with a dolphin pendant set with a single pearl and a pair of nearly-matched rings for her ears, but someday, her father assured her, she would have a wealthy husband and all the pearls she could ever dream of.

So she needn’t envy Hippolita, except of course the other girl had pearls _now._

The songs were all full of gloom and morbidity, too, Christ in his tomb and the bitter perfume of myrrh and all that nonsense. Myrrh wasn’t much of a scent, Diana thought, so unpleasant and sharp; why, if she’d been one of the Magi she’d have brought the Christ Child attar of roses, or perhaps cloves. Something rich and warm, to remind Him of summer and joy.

At last it would end and they’d spill out into the cold sunlit air of the churchyard, and maybe Hippolita would catch her eye and smile a little, that superior sidelong glance and red-lipped smirk that made Diana’s belly flutter with something that wasn’t quite resentment.

* * *

When she was fourteen, they slipped away from the sisters after morning Mass to a forgotten storeroom to huddle together and share sugared nuts hoarded from a summer celebration, forbidden fruits under the stern eyes of Sister Maria Annunziata.

It was close and warm under the blanket, almost too warm, but she didn’t care, not when Hippolita was pressed so close their skirts mingled together and she could feel her breath tickling her neck. It was Hippolita who dared it first, as she always bravely stood to any challenge, like the Amazon queen whose name she bore.

Her lips tasted like sugar. _Honey and milk are under thy tongue,_ Diana thought in sudden clear understanding, and then thought no more.

* * *

Her fifteenth Advent was a reprieve, each too-short, gloomy day another step towards marriage to a distant cousin who was, her brother had assured her, not so very doddering for a man his age.

Hippolita had written once, after her own marriage, a letter full of contradictions and riddles. Diana read it over and over, until it grew limp and brittle at the creases and threatened to fall apart, but it remained impenetrable, distant and infuriating as its author. She had refused to cry; betrayal deserved no tears.

The letter was signed—Hippolita had signed it so, with her own hand— _Montague’s wife._

Diana didn’t write back.

* * *

The wife of Lord Capulet was permitted to wear deep purple for Lent, so dark it is nearly black; a sober color, the color of poisonous hellebore, but also a rich color, like the velvet darkness of the sky just after sunset.

The wife of Lord Capulet was young, far younger than her doting husband, her hair as fair and golden as rinsing it with lemon and chamomile could make it, smooth and shining from a hundred strokes with the brush a day. 

The wife of Lord Capulet wore a collar of pearls and cut amethyst, pearl drops in her ears and silver embroidery on her gown. She bowed her head in seeming modesty and did not look across the aisle to the woman who sat opposite her in widow’s weeds (always that heavy silk, perfectly fitted, finely made, chosen with a merchant’s eye for quality), with a fidgety little boy still in skirts beside her.

Someday there would be a judgement, Lady Capulet knew, and she took her husband’s cold, age-spotted hand and held her back straight and proud.

* * *

It is Advent, a time for mourning, a time for thinking on past sins and future judgement. The mother of Julia does not go to Mass in the church, but to a grave just outside the city walls, unconsecrated ground for unbaptized babes and suicides. 

A merciful God won’t care about that, she tells herself as she kneels in the melting slush of the last snowfall, mud seeping icy through her skirts, and scrapes away snow from the stone, pulls up half-rotted weeds and throws them to the side.

It’s too late for fresh flowers. She has roses, dried to a papery memory of perfume in the autumn stillroom; a branch of hawthorn, scarlet with berries; a colored paper packet of the sweetmeats Julia had so loved as a child.

God is merciful. God must be merciful. If He is not—

Footsteps on the path, the careful start and stop of someone picking their way around puddles. She knows who it is before she looks up, before the woman who was for so brief a time everything she loved and for so much longer everything she thought she hated, speaks:

“Diana,” she says, and it is almost an apology.

“Hippolita.” It is not only her Julia who lies here, under cold marble. Diana shuffles over to make room for the mother of Romeo.

Her skirts are ruined. Next time she will wear an old gown. 

They kneel there together in the dirt, working in silence. The grief is no lighter shared, but Diana is glad, selfishly glad, that she is not alone. When she reaches over, Hippolita’s hand is cold in hers, with mud under the smoothly polished nails, a thin bloody scrape on her thumb where a twig tore at her skin. But she lets Diana twine their fingers together, and she holds on for a long moment. Too hard; her grip hurts, although her face reveals nothing. 

It feels like lancing an old wound, exposing it to light and air so that perhaps, at last, it might begin to heal.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't find much about Italy specifically, but Advent in the 16th century was a fairly gloomy affair, with few of the traditions we now associate with Advent (most of which are German and Protestant in origin). The religious focus was often on penance and the Judgement Day, and there are certainly echoes of this mournful atmosphere in many of the Advent carols we still sing, such as "We Three Kings" and "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."
> 
> The color purple was associated with Advent, at least for vestments and decorations; it symbolized a penitential spirit.
> 
> Other than that, I handwaved the history as usual.


End file.
